


Let Us Take A Step Between

by Ylixia



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Battle fatigue, Good Sex, M/M, Past Sexual Abuse, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Pre-Series, Seheron, internalized oppression, with a little trial and error
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 08:18:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7837294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ylixia/pseuds/Ylixia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seheron is a holding pattern.  One way or another, things cannot remain as they are.</p>
<p>Bull and Fenris steal time on the knife's edge of change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let Us Take A Step Between

**Author's Note:**

> I've thought for some time how sweet it would be for Bull and Fenris to share at least one night together, but a conversation with [dominawritesthings](http://dominawritesthings.tumblr.com/) where we realized Iron Bull and Fenris were probably in Seheron at about the same time tipped me headlong into inspiration about, well, this.
> 
> Before we get started, I do feel the need to warn about Fenris's headspace here, as he is the POV character and this fic is set at a time where, canonically, he hasn't really questioned his enslavement. His internal narrative makes casual references with frankly horrifying implications, and a lot of his language is problematic by design. I can easily see how this may be triggering to some, so please practice good self care forearmed with this knowledge, and let me know if you feel I should warn for anything else more specifically!

 

The sky is growing dark, the mud underfoot treacherous, and Fenris has long been separated from the rest of the raiding party.

This is neither unexpected nor cause for particular concern, but it is vexing. Fenris had hoped to circle around and regroup with the rest of the band once he was sure he was no longer being followed, but the Beresaad proved to be unusually persistent on this occasion. It will not be safe to rejoin the Fog Warriors until the morning at least, and that only if they do not pick up his trail again in all this stinking mud. All day rain has poured down without reprieve and Fenris is soaked and chilled to the bone. He had been looking forward to a hot meal, the warm glow of a campfire, and the company of his fellow warriors. How spoiled he has become.

He turns his mind from his mild discomfort and focuses on the task at hand. This section of the island he knows like the curls of lyrium etched onto his skin, after nearly a year of this strange twilit dream where he fights battles he believes in and has grown used to camaraderie and the respect of equals. There is a cave up a head, he knows, where he can wait out the rain out of reach of the Qunari and continue his journey in daylight. Perhaps it will even have stopped raining, by then.

Apparently at some point in this damp, sweltering jungle he picked up some optimism. He has no idea how that might have happened.

At any rate, the plan is sound enough, with the added comfort of familiarity. Fenris's unique appearance has often made it necessary for him to split off from the group and rejoin them once the danger had passed. It will be a blessing to rest his weary limbs out of this ceaseless wet, at least for –

The cave is occupied.

Fenris curses himself soundlessly and violently. His Master would have beaten him senseless for failing to recognize the broken underbrush leading up to the cave, stems still green and fresh, and the faint lingering scent of pipe smoke in the air, and he'd have been right to do it. He has been _warned_ time and time again, about familiarity breeding complacency, and yet here is his fool self stumbling headlong into a cave containing one of the very Qunari he had taken such pains to avoid.

He draws his sword and braces himself... for a charge that never comes. The Qunari warrior remains slumped against the cavern wall, gazing at him with hooded eyes, unmoving.

_The Qunari do not smoke,_ Fenris thinks nonsensically, his heart hammering so loudly he thinks it might be audible in the ringing silence of the cave, were it not for the steady hiss of heavy rainfall.

“Are you not going to attack,” he demands after a few beats of this tense stillness.

The Qunari – and Fenris realizes with a start that he _recognizes_ him – takes a deep drag of the pipe, exhales on a heavy sigh, and says “What's the fucking point?”

Fenris blinks. What is...? Just that morning they had viciously done their best to kill one another. Fenris remembers the battle vividly: He was a huge brute even for his kind, towering at least a head above his fellows, with horns point straight out and up in direct contrast to the graceful, swooping curves typical more typical of the Qunari. He had sensed the trap almost as soon as his unit had stepped in it, and had rallied his men to a ferocious counterattack. The brute was unable to save all of his unit, but neither was it the slaughter the Warriors had intended. A fearsome fighter indeed, no doubt bred and trained for it since birth, and now he was questioning the point of attacking one of the enemies who had helped kill his men?

“What a strange thing to say.”

The brute snorts. “Give it a few years, kid. Couple hundred days like today and it wont seem so mystifying.”

A few years, he says. Fenris does not have a few more years. His Master will come for him, as he is too expensive an investment and too valuable a commodity for Master to allow him to frolic on this island forever. Fenris does not dare dream of a few more hundred days like this one; his steel biting another's, his wits outmaneuvering determined pursuit, the future promise of rest and simple company. He does not even dare hope of a week. The rainy season is ending, Tevinter is slowly gaining back lost ground, and he has already stolen too much time.

And he will steal a little more. Master will not come for him tonight, not in this weather, even if he could track him after the sun sets. Fenris steps a little farther into the cave, just enough to avoid stray raindrops blown by the wind, and sits with his back against the wall and his naked blade resting across his knees.

“I am not going back out in that,” Fenris says in response to the Qunari's raised eyebrow. “If you are not going to fight me, then you shall have to suffer the burden of my company.”

The brute's laugh is dusty and raw, a metal hinge gone to rust with disuse. Fenris finds that he likes it, for no reason he can readily identify. Perhaps it is that those with easy laughs tend to have them at others' expense.

It is the only sound the Qunari makes for some time. He seems content to stare at the rain sheeting the mouth of the cave and completely ignore Fenris's existence, which suits him just fine. Fenris wont sleep, but he wasn't planing to anyway after a day spent narrowly avoiding pursuit. Or not avoiding, possibly, but if this is some trap it is ill-considered, and would have been sprung by now. For whatever reason, it seems that he and Fenris are both cut off from their people tonight.

“It's a good plan,” the brute says unexpectedly.

Fenris, who had frozen when the tense silence suddenly shattered, only turns a quizzical look at his companion. He seems to have something to say, and people who have decided to speak their minds can generally be relied on to do so without his prompting.

“Coming in as bait like that,” the Qunari continues. “You know, I've been getting reports for months about a possible alliance between Tevinter and a band of Fog Warriors. Figured it was bullshit. I mean, don't get me wrong, the foggies hate us, but I'm willing to bet they hate the 'vints even more. Even a rogue band teaming up with them seemed like a bit of a stretch to me. But damn if you don't step out of the shadows, glowing like a twin moon night, and have every fucking one of us scanning the clifftops for mages. Of course, the danger's a little closer to the ground, isn't it?”

“Yes,” Fenris says, because he seems to be waiting on a reply.

“Yeah,” he nods, taking a drag of his pipe. “But something tells me you're not a part of any Tevinter alliance.”

“No.”

“Didn't think so. And yet, now those reports are starting to make a little more sense to me. 'Cause you didn't get those markings from no fog warrior. Nah, I think the vints left all sorts of weird magic crap behind when we kicked their asses outta here last winter. Can't imagine an elf managed a spot on one of their boats, no matter how pretty he glows.”

Fenris didn't hear a question so he doesn't bother responding. Instead, he observes the creature before him more closely in the last faded twilight rays of the day. Vitaar paints bold slashes across the Qunari's bare chest, crossed here and there with scars both new and old, and his eyes glitter with shrewd intelligence. His Master and his friends like to think the Qunari little more than violent beasts, though how anyone could hold on to that fiction after year in and year out battling the people in question is beyond Fenris. Even so, this one's gaze seems to slice through him, leaving him open and uncomfortably vulnerable.

“Nothing to say?”

“To what purpose? You've figured it out easily enough without my input.”

That rusted laugh again, the sound scraping down Fenris's spine. “What can I say?” he asks with a sardonic twist of his mouth. “I'm damned good at my job.”  
  


Fenris tips his head curiously to one side. “What is your name?”

A shrewed look, a long drag of his pipe. “My name,” he says, pausing thoughtfully as if tasting the words, “is Bull.”

Fenris's eyebrows shoot up towards his hairline. “That is not a Qunari name.”

“No,” Bull agrees. “And what is yours?”

“Fenris.”

“Fenris,” he repeats, tasting that as well. “You hate it.”

“Nevertheless, it is mine.”

“Hmmm,” is all Bull says, tapping the ash out of his now burned-out pipe and tossing it carelessly aside. “D'you wanna fuck?”

Confusion, followed immediately by the icy shock of comprehension. Did he...? “ _What_?”

“Do you want to have sex with me?” Bull says slowly, as if that is at all the same question. “Neither of us is gonna sleep tonight. Seems as good a way as any to pass the time.” He pauses at the look on Fenris's face. “It's not a complicated question.”

But it is. Or, at least, it is a question that Fenris is utterly unprepared to answer. Did he _want_ to? He understands, theoretically, that wanting is a factor of sex for those who are not slaves, for those who are not shackled by class and circumstance and necessity, but he had not thought to ever experience the theory himself. People with the power of choosing like sex. Fenris knows this, it has been declared often enough in his hearing, has seen other Fog Warriors pair off at nights with a sort of wary envy, but what would it be _like_ he now finds himself wondering, to feel hands on his body by his own invitation? Would it feel different than all the others who came before? Would he enjoy it, like he enjoys the still-new rush of a fight of his own choosing? Will this dizzying illusion of choice he has built around himself extend to so far, or is his flesh already too tainted for him to every enjoy the touch of another?

A slick note of rebellion shivers up his spine. He wants to find out. The eye he he runs over Bull now is one of avarice. Bull is big, even for a Qunari, with thick ropes of muscle stacked on his large frame. His hands would be rough and calloused from swordplay, nothing like the soft manicured hands of an aristocrat, stinging with the cruel bite of magic. His skin is thick and gray, his voice is rough and smokey like red wine over gravel. No dark chants will fall from his lips. His strength is considerable, but all physical, mundane. Fenris feels confident pitting his own against it, should he need to.

Bull is nothing like anything Fenris has ever had and it is the height of idiocy to take this risk but. Fenris _wants_.

Fenris feels as though he stands on a clifftop in a summer storm, nothing in his thoughts but the crack of thunder and wind threatening to tear him from solid ground. “You will stop the moment I tell you,” he says. _Or you will regret it,_ he leaves unsaid. Bull has seen him fight, if he cannot foresee the consequences of pushing Fenris past the point of desire, he deserves what he will do to him.

“Of course.”

“At any point, at the moment of my choosing.”

“Yes,” Bull affirms. “I am aware of what the word “no” means.”

Most are, Fenris reflects. They simply do not believe it applies to them. Still, he takes the statement in the spirit it is given. “Then... yes.”  
  


There is a tremor in his hands as he sheathes his blade and sets it aside, as he unclasps chestplate, greaves, and vambraces to set beside it. He is afire with anticipation and trepidation, and his fingertips hover at the hem of his tunic.

“You can leave that on, if you want,” Bull says casually. He holds out a hand that is missing two fingers. No magister would endure such a blemish. “Do you want to come over here?”

Fenris finds that he does. Slowly, he puts himself within Bull's reach. The hand that curls over his hip dwarfs him, heavy and warm. Fenris shivers. Bull's thumb strokes a line of heat across his hip, muted through the cloth barrier, but makes no further moves to touch him. Fenris deliberately, determinedly forces every muscle in his body to relax while Bull simply looks up at his face and watches. He does not need to look very far up; even sitting, he is huge.

Daringly, Fenris puts a hand on Bull's shoulder and slides it slowly down to the back of the hand resting at his side. Pleased, he repeats the motion. Bull's skin is just as rough as he'd supposed, dappled with scars. As marked as Fenris's own flesh, but these gained in honest battle. Another shiver, a warm flush of desire.

“Can I kiss you?”

Fenris stares. “I already told you I want you to fuck me.”

“You told me you wanted to have sex with me. Now I'm asking if I can kiss you.”

Fenris furrows his brows, baffled. “You are very strange.”

Bull chuckles. “So you said. Well?”

“Yes,” Fenris says with a roll of his eyes, leaning forward to brace his hands on Bulls shoulders.

The kiss starts slow and chaste. The rough scratch of stubble is not particularly pleasant, but Fenris supposes it is preferable to the tickling itch of a full beard. Bulls lips are cracked and chapped, his mouth large and hot, but the press of him is is oddly gentle. Requesting response rather than demanding subservience, questing and questioning and almost tentative.

Between one beat and the next the kiss deepens, Bull's tongue sliding slick and pleasant against his own. It seems natural to follow the gentle tug of Bull's hand to fold himself into his lap, easy to drape his arms around Bull's neck. Strong arms wrap solidly around his back and Fenris feels flooded with warmth, lulled by the steady pound of rain outside the cave's shelter, dizzy with the heady glide of Bull's mouth on his.

A hand slides up Fenris's tunic and he arches into it. Another grasps his thigh and pulls him close and Fenris groans into Bull's mouth. Vitaar cracks and flakes beneath the desperate clutch of his fingers and Fenris spares a stray thought to hope that its application was far enough in the past to render it harmless.

It's good, incredibly so, and for a moment Fenris loses all thought, all comparisons to the past, everything except heat and desire and gentle strength. But then there's a hand at the lacing of his leggings and the feel of it is like pouring ice water in his veins.

Fenris freezes one moment before exploding into motion, some wild instinct tearing him out of Bull's embrace and to his feet, where the cold night air can cool his heated skin.

Silence. The only sound is Fenris's breathing, harsh to his own ears. Bull could be carved from stone for how still he sits, watching Fenris calmly as his pulse slows. Fenris only barely understands the wild terror that had gripped him with such disorienting abruptness, but it drains away as quickly as it came, leaving behind the vague, near-overwhelming desire that they _not stop_. He pulls in a steadying breath, and then another, and says, “You first.”

A beat, where Bull considers him keenly. Fenris shifts his weight from foot to foot, restless under his scrutiny. Bull opens his mouth as if to speak, but seems to think better of it, opting instead to shift forward so that he can unclasp the belt around his waist. He doesn't bother to stand when he shucks off his pants and Fenris can see why almost immediately: scar tissue, a lurid and raw-looking pink, ravages one knee.

A small noise of surprise cracks through Fenris's throat. “Your knee,” he says, gesturing redundantly.

“It's healing.”

Healing, not healed. There was no sign of a limp when they fought today, and Fenris can sympathize immediately with a wounded animal determined to show no weakness. It must be aching fiercely in the chill damp.

“I will be cautious,” Fenris says, and Bull responds to his halting tone with a dismissive snort.

“I'm not made of glass,” he grumbles, beckoning Fenris over with a curl of his fingers. Obligingly, Fenris steps closer, just within Bull's reach, and Bull's hand curls over his hip. Right back where they started.

“Your turn?” Bull asks softly

Squaring his shoulders, Fenris pulls off his tunic in one smooth movement, tossing it to the floor before he can think better of it. He goes next for the lacings of his leggings with a sort of desperate haste, but he can't stop the stutter of hesitation, or the light tremor of his hands.

“You don't have to – ” Bull starts, but cuts himself off at Fenris's frustrated growl. He _wants_ this, he _invited_ it. Why now does he shake like some untouched virgin, as if he has never before stripped in preparation for being fucked. He knows he does not _have_ to, that is why he told Bull yes, so this skittishness is is absurd.

Fenris strips himself the rest of the way in frenetic, jerky motions, nearly tearing the fabric of his clothing and toppling himself over in the process, until finally he stands naked, a handsbreadth from a hulking, equally naked Qunari.

Oddly, he feels better, somehow. Like walking across a magical barrier, the transition over the threshold is awful with the stinging and buzzing across his skin, but once wholly on the other side the sensation falls away as if it never was.

Bull makes a soft shushing sound as he cups his hand back around Fenris's hip. He traces a thumb over the curls of his tattoos and Fenris shivers as they lie quiescently under his touch. The tattoos themselves are completely unresponsive to Bull's mundane touch, and that in and of itself ignites its own response.

“They really go all over, don't they,” Bull murmurs, framing Fenris's hips with both hands now, smoothing them up his sides and across this chest. Their size dwarfs him, makes him look like a small delicate thing. Something to be protected.

Fenris has never been protected from anything, in his memory.

His cock fills slowly, naturally, as Bull's hands run across his body, as Bull's eyes take in the flush of blood over the warm tan of his skin. This arousal is like the simple burn of a hearthfire, nominally similar but in truth an entirely different thing than the destructive raze of a mage's inferno. The quiet pleasure of it sets Fenris's body trembling.

“Alright?” Bull asks, one hand hovering over the thick heat of his groin.

“ _Yes_ ” Fenris breaths, and his knees nearly buckle as Bull's hand engulfs his cock, sliding gently over the length of it. His other hand slides around to the small of Fenris's back, encouraging Fenris to brace himself on Bull's shoulders as he's stroked. Fenris's breath comes in heavy gasps and his fingers and toes curl with sensation.

It's not overwhelming – Fenris knows well the feeling of being overwhelmed – but it's expansive, unfurling to touch everything within him, filling in all the cracks and crevices until he is simply awash in pleasure.

“Can I use my mouth on you?” The request is entirely unexpected and Fenris stutters out a _yes_ before he can even think about it because surely it will feel good, the same as everything else in this moment, and this is something he has no frame of reference for, no dark memory to taint the present.

Bull's hot mouth slides over him and he shivers out a moan. It feels incredible, the way Bull's tongue slides across sensitive flesh, the way he just swallows Fenris down when his hips jerk involuntarily, like he could swallow his cock all day. Like Fenris could grip his horns and thrust into the glorious wet heat of his mouth, over and over again, chasing his own satisfaction until –

He wrenches his mind from that line of thought with an internal cringe of horror, and unease steals over him, blotting out the pleasure. All of the sudden, the oppressive knowledge that Bull is on his knees before him, servicing him, is inescapable. It is inescapable that Fenris could keep him there, that he could _take_ if that service were no longer freely given. Bull is strong, yes, but he is already vulnerable in this position, and the markings give Fenris unnatural strength. Bull saw him in battle but that hardly matters for most people – no matter how many times they observe his power, they do not truly understand it until it is turned on them. Bull would be no different.

But Fenris would do no such thing. He would never take what was not his, he couldn't even imagine it. And he could _come_ in Bull's mouth, let the sucking heat bring him off naturally, painlessly, and Bull had _offered_ he'd wanted to –

And if he didn't, if he changed his mind, Fenris could _make_ him, with the magic carved into his very flesh –

“ _Stop!_ ” Fenris gasps.

To his surprise, Bull does so at once. He pulls away entirely, in fact, snatching back his hands and leaning away from Fenris's space. Fenris takes and involuntary step back, and then another for good measure. His hands are trembling again and he is suddenly, inexplicably, _angry_.

“Why would you _do_ such a thing?” he snarls. He feels as though something within him is trying to claw out of his skin and he has an overwhelming urge to pace, to shed this built up tension through motion, but he's still _hard_ damn all the gods and himself twice over. He cannot bear the thought of feeling the undignified bobbing between his legs if he gave into the this wild urge to _move_. He digs his nails viciously into his own palms. “Why would you _choose_ to debase yourself, submit to such a grotesque, humiliating – ”

“I don't think it's humiliating,” Bull cuts in, gently but firmly. “I think it feels good, and I like making people feel good. I thought you might like it but it turns out you don't, so I won't do it anymore. No big deal.”

Fenris snorts with deep disgust, raking a hand through his hair. He _still can't move_ despite the tension pulled taught in every line of his body. It had just felt so good.

Of course it had, Fenris thinks, hating himself with sudden vehemence. It is the most despised and frequently ordered of his duties, after killing things and party tricks. Of course it felt good, when _he_ found himself with that power, above another person and taking pleasure from them. All the while the temptation to take more than was given lurking at the back of his mind, because now it was _his_ hand on the leash, and Fenris knows better than most how difficult that leash is to drop once it is in hand.

“Hey,” Bull says sharply, snapping his fingers in front of Fenris's eyes, demanding his full attention. “I like sucking cock. Are you listening? I _like_ it. I offered because I like it and I stopped because you don't. No one was degraded and no one will be sucking on any more cocks for the rest of the night, okay?”

Fenris growls again, harsher this time. “It is not that simple.”

“Bullshit it's not. No one is making any rules here besides us.”

Fenris blinks, the desperate rage draining away as quickly as it came. It's ridiculous, to pretend the rules are different here, to act as though all of the world and all of the rules of men and nature do not exist outside of this cave. And yet, perhaps not so ridiculous. They are enemies, after all, who should have done their best to destroy one another the moment their eyes met. In an isolated cave halfway up a dormant volcano, heavy rain washing away sound and scent, they should already be bleeding out on the stone floor. Instead, here they are in the dead of night fumbling their way through the most ridiculous sexual experience in Fenris's memory by far.

A strangled, hiccuping laugh tears free from Fenris's throat, and he presses a hand to his mouth, as if he could shove that bubble of hysterical laughter back in. This is _ridiculous_ and all hope of getting himself under control is dashed when Bull joins him, a warm base rumbling under Fenris's high-pitched hysteria. When Bull holds his arms up, Fenris steps back into them, still not quite under control, settling himself in Bull's lap, taking care of his damaged knee.

“This is,” Fenris mumbles into Bull's neck when the brief burst of hilarity drains from them, “The most absurd thing I have ever done.”

Another roll of laughter from Bull, this with a strange edge to it. “Likewise.”

Sitting wrapped in Bull's arms is like a concentrated version of his life here on Seheron, like Fenris is stealing something which he never had any right to.

Something which he has no right to, but which he will cherish for the short time that he has it. To distract himself from his growing unease, he presses a kiss to the curve of Bull's neck, trailing more up to the corner of his jaw, his cheek, and finally his lips. Bull opens up easily to him, naturally, and Fenris gives himself over to this strange, unmoored sensation that has slowly been creeping into their little hidey-hole since the sun set. It is as if, in their isolation from the rest of the world, it has faded a little bit from reality.

Bull's hands slide across Fenris's bare flesh, sword callouses catching and scratching lightly at his skin, making him shiver and press closer. He feels Bull's cock thickening against his thigh, the answering pool of heat in his own groin, and claws gently at Bull's back and shoulders.

Fenris marvels at how good it feels, how good it _keeps_ feeling, despite the starts and stops of the night, the intrusions of thought and memory that have no place in this space. The tingle of pleasure, the heady throb of desire, it is so much better than Fenris dared even dream, but then Bull's hand slides over the curve of his ass and Fenris wants _more_.

He hums a moan into Bull's mouth, presses back against the touch. When Bull squeezes his fingers _almost_ to the crease of his ass, Fenris shivers and stutters a needy, involuntary sound.

Encouraged, Bull grips him with both hands, pulling him close in a slow, delicious grind against the thick length of Bull's cock, striking up a slow rhythm that has Fenris panting and desperate in moments.

It's a vicious tease, Bull's fingers _so close_ to where Fenris wants them, Bull's cock grinding against his own. Fenris arches back to press into the grip, licking hungrily into Bull's mouth, and when Bull's grip shifts _just_ so and his fingers tease just slightly at the rim of him, Fenris feels almost ready to shake apart.

“Do you – ”

“ _Yes,_ ” Fenris hisses.

“Are you _sure_ ” Bull insists. A distant corner of Fenris's mind appreciates his caution, but the rest of him is rapidly losing patience. He bites the lobe of Bull's ear, hard enough to make him grunt, and growls “ _Fuck_ me,” with as much authority as he can muster when he can only barely catch his breath.

“Yeah, okay,” Bull agrees, fumbling through one of the pouches at his discarded belt while he continues the tease. When his other hand returns his fingers are slick with some substance, and one starts pushing slowly in.

Fenris tosses his head back as his body opens slowly around the intrusion, more slowly than he had expected. He's fallen out of conditioning, he supposes, in the time since the evacuation. It stings, a little, but the small pain is nothing against the blunt pleasure of being filled, of his body opening and stretching and clenching in a way that feels nothing but _good._

Fenris clings to Bull's shoulders, cursing reverently as pleasure shivers through his entire body. There's a corner of his brain, tense and alert for some flood of terrible memory, that cannot at first relax into the thick, sweet sensation curling up his spine and cannot, quite, let his body ease into the penetration the way it wants, lest some dark wave of terror descends, flinging him panicking from Bull's embrace once more. And yet it is soothed with startling speed by the base rumble of Bull's voice ( _”Oh yeah, that's the spot, isn't it?” “Fuck, look at you squirm. No, no, don't hold back, I like it.” “Mmm, do that again. Fucking gorgeous.”_ ) and the steady stroke of a rough hand on his cock, a courtesy almost never given, grounding him firmly in the here and now.

He'd wondered, before, if another's touch would feel very different when invited, and his whole body cries out an emphatic _yes_. Different, so different it almost couldn't be the same act, as if he'd been eating nails all his life and calling it food...

“Whoa,” Bull murmurs, dragging a fraction of Fenris's attention from the ecstasy thrumming through his body. “That's different.”

Fenris cracks open his eyes – odd, he can't recall closing them – to Bull aglow in the dark cavern. Or no, the glow is him, light from his markings washing gently across Bull's skin.

The markings have always been reactive to extreme emotion, long before Fenris learned to control them for battle. They've been set alight during sex in the past, of course, but this is something different. A warm flicker barely brighter than a candle, pulsing gently with the sweet waves of pleasure Bull's firm warrior's hands are coaxing from him. They seem to light up the whole cave, but their brightness is only by contrast to the darkness surrounding them.

“Yes, it is,” Fenris rasps, thrusting up into Bull's tight grip before arching back against the second finger at his entrance. He moans and shudders all over when it sinks into him, clutching at the back of Bull's head when he dips down to kiss him.

“Well, if you're not worried,” Bull murmurs against his lips. Worry is the farthest thing from Fenris's mind, hooked as he is between Bull's strong, clever hands, hardly able to move when every direction seems to spark deliciously across his skin. He wants to press back to where he's being stretched and rubbed inside, he wants to press forward into a tight grip and sure strokes. His hips roll, rocking exquisitely between, his thighs gripping Bull's hips and his toes curled under the thick weight of his thighs. He is aware, dimly, of the gasps and groans echoing in their isolated cavern, but he could not say on threat of death which sounds might belong to whom.

He wants this feeling to last forever, he will die if it lasts much longer. He wants to come, he doesn't want to end this bliss a moment before he must. Orgasm pools in Fenris's belly, unrecognizable at first in its slow build, but undeniable. He thinks, briefly, to try to delay, to ask Bull to slow down, but the moment he opens his mouth the feeling crests and the dam breaks, unstoppable and all-consuming, and every muscle in his body pulls tight as he shakes violently as he comes.

Bull strokes him through it, soothing and coaxing through the aftershocks until Fenris is boneless against him, limbs loose and his face tucked under Bull's chin.

“Fuck, that was hot,” Bull says roughly, withdrawing his fingers and leaving Fenris feeling loose and wet and yet still distantly hungry for more.

For the moment, Fenris's mind is still and his body is limp. He thinks it will feel good to be fucked like this; he feels far too relaxed for any pain to reach him, which could certainly only help with Bull's size. He has taken larger, but not by much and not for some time.

However, after a cursory wipe down with unidentified cloth – Bull's pants, perhaps – Bull merely settles Fenris more comfortably against him and sets to stroking his back. He seems, despite the hard length of his cock pressed snugly against his belly, more or less prepared to spend the rest of the night dozing upright against a solid stone wall.

It is nice, Fenris decides, to be stroked and petted with welcome hands after mutual pleasure. But as the last tremors still and Fenris's breathing grows quiet and steady, he finds to his surprise that he would like more, and he wonders what Bull is waiting for.

After a few minutes of pointed shifting, Fenris asks “Are you not going to fuck me yet?”

A soft chuckle. “Do you want me to?”

Fenris grunts a sharp, annoyed sound. “If you'll recall the distant past of less than an hour ago, you'll find that I have already given my answer.”

“Answers change,” Bull says mildly, a somewhat perplexing statement in itself. “Besides, you said you wanted to have sex, and we did. I didn't want to presume past that.”

“You have not been satisfied,” Fenris says slowly, feeling as though he is missing some crucial assumption in the Qunari's worldview.

“Don't worry about me,” Bull says slyly, smoothing a hand down Fenris's back. “That was plenty satisfying.”

Fenris grinds pointedly against Bull's still-hard cock and raises a skeptical eyebrow, though of course it can't be seen in the dark. He seems to pick up Fenris's meaning anyway and snorts a laugh. “Is everyone this messed up about sex in the south?”

Fenris shrugs, keeping his shoulders from tensing by sheer force of will. “I would not know. As a slave, I imagine my impressions of sex are a good deal more skewed than most, by your standards.”  
  


Bull goes quiet, but doesn't stop stroking Fenris's back, so Fenris ignores the suddenly awkward silence as best he can.

“You're not a slave,” Bull says finally.

Fenris does not bother to correct him. It is a nice fantasy, there is no need to let go of it until he must. He rolls his hips pointedly against Bulls instead of answering. This time, Bull grips his hips and presses him close.

“Ask because you want to, not because you think you owe me anything,” he says lowly.

Fenris buries his face in Bull's should and clings to his neck, picking up a steady rocking rhythm that begins to stoke the cooled fires of his arousal. Bulls breath catches and he moves in slight counterpoint.

“I want to know how it feels,” Fenris whispers. _When I asked for it, when I want it,_ he thinks, but those words are harder to speak out loud, even with the continuous fall of rain muffling everything, making the world hazy and dreamlike.

“I will stop the moment you ask me to, for any reason,” Bull tells him, fumbling for the abandoned jar.

“I know,” Fenris says, with complete honesty. What a strange sort of trust to place in a man who had tried to kill him just that morning.

And yet here he is, shuddering entirely with pleasure as thick fingers press once again at his entrance. He's a little raw, but only enough to add a bright edge to the now-familiar sensation of being gently filled. He's faintly surprised at how long Bull takes preparing him, though he supposes he might have expected it, as Bull seems curiously disinterested in causing pain and his cock is prodigious.

Desire builds more slowly this time, almost lazily. Bull seems in no rush and the desperate edge that shook Fenris earlier seems to have drained away with his orgasm, leaving only a muted hunger for touch and the languid roll of his hips as he moves into the press of Bull's fingers.

And then Bull is gripping his thighs and shifting his weight, the blunt head of his cock pressing up against him and sending fresh ardor sparkling up his spine. Fenris moans unsteadily at the insistent pressure, trying his best to relax and breath deep, to allow the intrusion into his body. He yells and claws at Bull when the flared head slips into him, igniting a flash in his markings that steadies into a dim glow.

“Alright?” Bull rasps, and Fenris moans his assent. Just that little bit makes him feel impossibly full, and there is so much more to take. Still, it does not truly hurt. Not enough to distract him from the indescribable press of his cock, the way Bull's hugeness can't help but scrape against all the best parts inside him.

Fenris works himself slowly down on Bull's cock, utterly losing control of his voice. Bull clutches the hair at the back of his neck and one hip, presses his lips against Fenris's temple and whispers encouragement and filthy praise as their moans reverberate in their chamber and are swallowed by the storm outside.

By the time he is fully seated, Fenris is trembling all over, insensible and utterly incapable of quieting his moans, the slight rock of his hips. He is _so full_ and it feels good, so good, even better when Bull pulls him tight and rocks up into him.

“Ahhh, _fuck_ ” Bull groans into his hair, striking up a steady, shallow rhythm. He tilts up Fenris's chin and kisses him, sloppy and desperate. “I'm not gonna last long.”

“Neither will – _ahh_ – I,” Fenris pants. His cock is pressed between his belly and Bull's, the hand clutching his back pressing their bodies tight, and every movement of Bull's cock goes off like lightning inside him. There is nothing, now, outside the heavy weight filling him, the feel of skin pressed hotly against his own, the shiver of Bull's breath against his lips as he gasps, and murmurs ridiculous endearments, and finally croaks out a warning.

“Ahh, shit, I'm – ah!” Bull gasps, and Fenris can feel the pulse of his cock inside him, as he grips his waist tight and jerks up into him. The hot splash of come is nearly, _nearly_ enough to tip him over the edge, but it is few more moments before he ruts against bull's belly enough to make him tense, then shake with the force of his second release. Bull's fingers dig in to Fenris's thighs with a half pained moan as Fenris clenches around his hypersensitive cock, and then they are both gasping for air and leaning heavily against each other.

_And now I know how it feels,_ Fenris thinks with a sort of quiet victory, and opens his mouth to say as much when Bull tilts up his chin and catches his mouth in a kiss instead, An occupation far superior to talking, Fenris decides, and sets himself to licking hungrily into the wet heat of Bull's mouth and firmly refuses to wonder what the morning will bring.

The rain does not let up even a little until the first pale rays of dawn. Fenris and Bull lay together, back to front, and watch as the chill morning sun slowly crawls into their refuge. One of Bull's big hands lies heavily on Fenris's belly, and Fenris idly strokes his fingertips across it. Appreciating, while he still can, the roughness and scars, all the imperfections that made his touch bearable through the uncertain night. Well, much more than _bearable_.

“It will be difficult for me to fight you in earnest, when next we meet in battle,” Fenris says quietly. He wonders if he could ever kill this man now, after all that has transpired between them, and his mind skitters away from the thought.

“It won't,” Bull says simply. As Fenris tenses he clarifies, “Because you won't see me again. By nightfall I'll have turned myself in to the Ben-Hassrath.”

Fenris starts, and twists to stare at him. He has heard plenty about the Ben-Hassrath re-educators, horrifying even when held against the worst of of his Master's moods. “Are you mad?”

“Yes.”

Fenris furrows his brow. “You don't.... seem so.”

Bull snorts. “Yesterday I snuck away from my unit in order to satisfy a personal vendetta, and spent the night fucking a magic bas warrior in a cave. What would you call it?”

Fenris's mouth twists. “You are no slave, with masters to declare a desire for freedom mental illness.

Bulls chuckle sounds more like warning than amusement. “And what do you know of freedom, Little Wolf?”

“Very little,” Fenris snarls, “but enough to know you are being foolish.”

“Asit tal-eb,” Bull says. “I choose to be.”

A sentiment Fenris knows better than to argue with. It would only be a waste of his breath.

“You could come with me,” Bull offers quietly. “The Qun protects the Viddathari from their former masters.”

“In return for what, I wonder. No,” Fenris says, cutting off Bull's retort. “A tempting offer, and one I have considered, but no.”

“Fair enough,” Bull shrugs.

And then that... seems to be that. Fenris feels vaguely that he should make an offer in kind, to return with him to the Fog Warriors or, perhaps more likely, for them to leave this island altogether. But that path leads only to death, and they could take shorter ones if that was what they truly wished.

So together, in silence, they watch the sun rise and burn away the fog of last night's rain. It is Fenris, in the end, who pulls himself reluctantly from Bull's embrace, pulls on his clothes and straps on his armor and sword. He presses one final kiss to Bulls lips, sweet and melancholy, and then their stolen time is at an end. He melts into the jungle without a backwards glance.

They survived the night together. Only time would tell what the harsh light of day would bring.


End file.
